Selection Monday: Instant Replay

By Sean Ryan

CollegeBaseballInsider.com Co-Founder

 

Selection Monday has come and gone. And the madness over the past few weeks has resulted in 64 teams that will begin the Road to Omaha.

 

It didn’t come without some controversy, which is no surprise. It always does, always will. That’s what makes the process so much fun, yet so incredibly chaotic.

 

The NCAA reported the last four happy teams as being Maryland, USF, Clemson and Oregon. It listed the first four disappointed teams as being North Carolina, Missouri, Michigan State and Southern Miss. Notice a trend there? Conferences represented by those eight teams include the ACC, SEC, Pac-12, Big Ten, American and Conference USA. To be fair, each of those conferences ranked in the Top 6 in the country in RPI, so it’s natural they make up some of the bubble teams.

 

Noticeably lacking from that list of teams in the immediate mix, however, are UNF, Nevada and Southeastern Louisiana, all of which won regular-season titles and had RPIs worthy of consideration.

 

We try to get into the minds of the committee and base our projections on what it will do. It’s tough to see UNF (RPI 44) not in that “Final Four” when Oregon (62) and Clemson (54) are being discussed. And Nevada (58) and Southeastern Louisiana (52) are left to wonder whether regular-season titles matter much when compared to the late runs the Ducks and Tigers put together.

 

Who we had…

 

• For our last five in, we projected Nevada, North Carolina, USF, Tulane and Bradley. The Wolf Pack clearly was hurt by the fact it didn’t play any games against Top 50 squads and two quick losses in the Mountain West Conference tournament on its home field. Still, we thought the NCAA would reward Nevada for its 19-9 road record, especially when UCSB was chosen as a host.

 

• On North Carolina, it really was the feeling that either the Tar Heels or Clemson – not both – would get in. And we thought that with an RPI 26 spots higher, North Carolina would get the nod. We liked that despite an up-and-down year – and a split of four games with Clemson – the Tar Heels went 23-19 against the Top 100 in the nation. The only teams with more Top 100 wins are: LSU (31), Florida (30), Florida State (30), Vanderbilt (30), Louisville (30), Miami (27), UCLA (24) and Houston (24). Five of those teams are national seeds, the other three are Regional hosts and No. 1 seeds. Clemson was 20-21 against the Top 100.

 

• Speaking of Clemson, how big was the sweep at Florida State? Our guess is that if the Tigers had gotten just two of three, that might not have been enough, particularly after losing series to Georgia Tech and Louisville leading into May. Clemson won eight of its final 11, including those three against the Seminoles, one against Charleston and one in the ACC Tourney against Louisville. That strong finish clearly helped, but if you extend a couple more weeks, when the Tigers lost six of eight, they ended up going 10-9 down the stretch. By comparison, UNC went 11-9 in its final 20, including a damaging sweep to Notre Dame.

 

 

Some interesting choices…

• Oregon and Michigan State: As mentioned, we didn’t include Oregon. Like Clemson, we don’t have a huge problem with the committee’s selection of the Ducks, but it’s interesting that Michigan State was in the mix for one of the final spots. Oregon’s series win against the overall top seed UCLA was impressive. The Ducks also won series they should have won down the stretch against the likes of Utah, Washington State, Stanford and Washington. They also won their league series against Oregon State and dropped a single game to the Beavers. But they were swept – in Eugene – by Michigan State. For what it’s worth, the Spartans also beat Clemson. We know conferences aren’t supposed to matter, but if Michigan State were in the ACC or SEC, would the Spartans be in? Would the Committee really have taken North Carolina or Missouri next if Maryland had beaten Michigan in the Big Ten tourney or Texas had fallen to Oklahoma State in the Big 12? That’s a tough pill for the Spartans to swallow knowing they have four wins against the last two teams to reach the field and played an incredible schedule that included a trip to UCLA.

 

• Grading the Committee: Overall, it was a pretty good year for the Committee save for the beefs above.  

  • The good: We agreed with TCU and Missouri State as the last two national seeds. TCU’s body of work compared favorably with MSU, Vanderbilt and Texas A&M, despite a rough showing in the Big 12 tourney. And the Bears just kept getting better and better. The SEC, strong as always, may have gotten a third national seed if the Commodores or Aggies had won the SEC tourney title.

  • The interesting: We were surprised that neither Charleston nor Radford was selected as a Regional host. We thought it would come down to those two (one of which would host), UCSB, Cal State Fullerton and Houston. We also thought that with a bevy of teams in the Region who were assured bids (Coastal Carolina, Charleston, East Carolina, Virginia, Radford, NC State), one of them, likely Charleston, would host. That the committee put a Regional in Lake Elsinore was a bit of a surprise, as we thought maybe USC would host as a No. 2 seed. We didn’t see both Fullerton and UCSB getting to host.  

  • Mixing it up: There’s always going to be some commonplace Regional assignments (Oral Roberts and Arkansas to Stillwater) because of travel. We were a little surprised they kept three Houston teams in Houston, but when you have the bulk of the East Coast catching a flight, you need to keep some close (very close in this case) to home. But overall, we liked seeing the matchups. And for the Super Regionals, it would have been tough to separate all three Florida hosts, so a Florida/Florida State potential matchup was almost inevitable. But keeping Vanderbilt and Louisville and UCLA and Fullerton apart keeps it fresh.